TR2008-056

A Software-Defined Radio System for Backscatter Sensor Networks


    •  Vannucci, G., Bletsas, A., Leigh, D., "A Software-Defined Radio System for Backscatter Sensor Networks", IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, Vol. 7, No. 6, pp. 2170-2179, June 2008.
      BibTeX TR2008-056 PDF
      • @article{Vannucci2008jan,
      • author = {Vannucci, G. and Bletsas, A. and Leigh, D.},
      • title = {A Software-Defined Radio System for Backscatter Sensor Networks},
      • journal = {IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications},
      • year = 2008,
      • volume = 7,
      • number = 6,
      • pages = {2170--2179},
      • month = jun,
      • issn = {1536-1276},
      • url = {https://www.merl.com/publications/TR2008-056}
      • }
  • Research Area:

    Communications

Abstract:

Backscatter radio is proposed for sensor networks. In that way, the transmitter for each sensor is simplified to a transistor connected to an antenna and therefore, the cost for each sensor\'s communicator becomes negligible, while energy used for wireless communication per sensor is minimized. A software-defined transceiver is built to transmit a carrier, receive the reflections from various sensors and extract their transmitted messages. This work presents a thorough model of the backscatter radio link, the system architecture and a set of data extraction techniques for each sensor\'s information, testing in practice a sensor communicating through backscatter at a range of approximately 15 meters indoors, with 5 milliwatt transmission power at 10 bits per second. This work highlights the idiosyncrasies of the backscatter channel and provides a new communication perspective in the fertile area of scalable sensor networks, especially when low bit-rate, ultra-low cost sensors are required.

 

  • Related News & Events

    •  NEWS    IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications: 2 publications by Jinyun Zhang and others
      Date: January 15, 2008
      Where: IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications
      MERL Contact: Jinyun Zhang
      Brief
      • The articles "Asynchronous Interference Mitigation in Cooperative Base Station Systems" by Zhang, H., Mehta, N.B., Molisch, A.F., Zhang, J. and Dai, H. and "A Software-Defined Radio System for Backscatter Sensor Networks" by Vannucci, G., Bletsas, A. and Leigh, D. were published in IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications.
    •